Coming to this discussion a little late, because broken computer and summer and business and school strike and and and and....
OK, got that off my chest! Ha ha
I attended art school for 3 years, but did 2 years of the program. They had what they called an outreach program and sent instructors up to the northern town I lived in to teach on weekends, and it took 2 years to complete the first year. These two years were FANTASTIC! We would do one course at a time, full two days on the weekends of instruction, evening remote lecture for art history a couple of times a week and the week to finish our assignments. So I worked mornings, did my assignments in the afternoons. It was ideal. And most of those two years was worked around the fundamentals. I loved it and wanted to get more indepth training at the main school, so I enrolled in the second year program.
This is where I found out that the teachers that they had sent up to us, weren't the teachers at the school. Not all of them, but some of them were the studio assistants. The ones that help the students with the technical aspects of what they want to do. So that's what they taught. One of the teachers (a sculptor) was a working sculptor but not a teacher at the school. I guess he did it for some bucks, but he was amazing! I learned so much from him.
The teachers at the school were what I found out was the archtypical terrible art school experience. You could put everything you had into making a piece, but if you didn't have some bullshit to surround it with, you would get a crappy mark. It was all about the concept, not the skills. So I went with it and tried to improve my skills on my own while also fulfilling the concept portion of the requirements.
For example, we had a final project for our 3d class that was assigned at the beginning of the semester. It had to have a container and something in the container. I built a treasure chest out of mahogany. I sanded and polished it with tung oil until it glistened, it was outfitted with brass corners, nails, hasps, hinges. I collected chestnuts, and germinated a bunch on my windowsill starting in the fall. By spring one had sprouted, hurrah! So my piece was a treasure chest that when you unlocked it had a growing tree coming out of a bunch of dried up chestnut seeds. I thought it spoke for itself.
My roommate did NOTHING all year on the project. The night before, she grabbed a bedsheet, wrapped some stuff in it and tied it to a broomstick hobo style. Then she proceeded to bullshit about how each thing in the sheet represented her trying to escape her life and start new.
I got a C, she got an A.
I didn't return for 3rd year.